It is best for everyone, he knows it, but it doesn't make things any easier. No one would want him around now anyway and hadn't he always wanted to see the world?
His hand lingers on the doorframe, the inn quiet and dark while everyone sleeps. He leaves no note, no goodbye, no clue to anyone where he's gone or why. It's safer for him and safer for them to not know anything at all.
"Revan!"
He cringed at the sound of his sister's voice. Any other man would be in heaven, blessed by the Creator to be so surrounded by women. Revan found it annoying at best. He was the only male of four children, and the youngest to boot. He wasn't a brother, he was a pack mule and free labor for the inn. Annoying.
"What??" he called back, ignoring the command behind the voice – for now. His hands worked carefully over the strings of his harp. It needed tuning and sanding.
"REVAN!!"
This time the sound of his sister's voice was shrill and angry. Great. He wasn't allowed his own pleasures because he had to tend to theirs and that of the inn's guests. He set his harp down gently and sighed heavily. The day was not starting well already and the sun was not even at its zenith.
"I'm coming!" he hollered back, already agitated. His feet carried him out of his secluded hidey hole on instinct for, given the choice, he'd have stayed locked away drowning on the notes of his music. It was a passion that called to him more than anything in the world. To play for others was as fulfilling and erotic an experience for him as it was to lay with another. Truth be told, he preferred the strings of his harp to the curves of a woman.
"What?" he said, once he'd made his way downstairs to the kitchens where Mira stood, hands on hips, toe tapping. Revan hardly seemed to care, throwing himself against the door frame in a clearly agitated stance.
"Are you deaf?" she said. "I called for you – twice."
"I heard you," he responded, sounding bored. Mira hardly seemed amused. She was the eldest of the four Si'ahl children, seven years Revan's senior.
"I need you to go get the order from the butcher," she stated, folding her arms beneath her very ample breasts. Four different men courted his sister, currently – something for which she was quite proud of.
"Why can't Lirim just bring them?" he asked. Lirim usually brought the orders to the inn rather than having Revan or his father trek out to get it. It was a rare time when they had to go across town to retrieve their order.
"Because he's sick, fool, and Mistress Ilsa is tending to him – now get before I whollop you for being a lazy sod."
"They have sons," Revan retorted instead, feeling the familiar throb at his temple now. "Isn't one of them your suitor – have him bring it as a favor for sharing your bed."
The look on Mira's face would have been enough to set him in a foul mood for a week but the resounding slap across his face guaranteed death to the next idiot that crossed him.
" Get moving," she growled and said no more. She didn't have to. He knew his limits with his sisters. Setting themin a foul mood set their father in a foul mood and when his temper snapped, you wished for the Dark One's torment instead.
The argument ended there and 20 minutes later, Revan had the inn's small cart hitched and was on his way to the butcher. It didn't take long to get things from Padran and he learned that Lirim was actually rather ill – something that had him swimming in his own sweat.
"Hey," Padran said as he helped Revan load the last of their order into the cart. "If you see Moran tell him he should be back here helping instead of swooning over your sister's breasts."
Revan couldn't help but laugh at Padran's request. His sister could seduce a eunuch into bed and have him screaming her name to the heavens – and rightly so, she'd learned from their mother. However, the attentions she was currently getting had stopped being intriguing and cute several moons past now.
"I'll make sure to deliver the message," Revan responded as he climbed back onto their little roan mare. "Take care Pad."
"You too – hey, will you play tonight?" Padran asked before Revan could pull away.
" Maybe," Revan shrugged. "If mother asks me." He couldn't help but smile at that. There was hardly a night that his mother didn'task him to play for their guests. She loved hearing him and doted on him because of it. It was the only reason he stuck around.
"She always asks you to play," Padran pointed out with a smirk.
"Then I guess I'll be playing, won't I?" Revan retorted, getting their roan mare started on the way back. "Come see for yourself! Saliha will be home tonight!"
"I'll be there!" Padran called back happily, waving as his friend rode back to the inn.
The evening had gone well. Padran had come to watch him play – and to make doe eyes at his sister, Saliha. She was the same age as Padran and only a year and a half older than Revan. She didn't flaunt herself nearly as much as Mira did – probably becauseMira did – but Revan had always thought she was the most lovely of his three sisters. And, he was not too proud to admit that she and Padran were a good match, nor that he helped get them together whenever Saliha was home.
His sister was an Accepted of the White Tower, well on her way to being Aes Sedai. She'd risen fast through the ranks of Novice and had only just attained her new status. But, as a result, she was now allowed to plan visits back with her family, visits they all cherished when they came to pass.
"Well well," someone scoffed, interrupting his thoughts as he walked home from his studies. "If it isn't mama's little songbird."
Nethin Gameer. He and his little drones were constantly picking on Revan, poking fun for his talent and skill - - and for having a doting mother that made it well known just how much she loved her son's music.
"You're not lost, are you mama's boy?" Nethin asked, stepping in Revan's path.
"I don't have time for your pathetic games, Gameer," Revan replied his tone smug and annoyed at the same time. "Move. Or be moved."
"Oh-ho really now?" Nethin chortled, closing in rather than listening to Revan's words. They were in a mood this day, apparently, for they rarely challenged him as a unit like they were doing now. Even if he couldn't always best them, Revan definitely left marks to show for his efforts and word always got back to his father – who couldn't be bested by anyone.
"Gotta go play for mommy?" another of the drones asked. The boy was no older than Revan and already trying too hard at being a man. He had patches of hair along his chin that he insisted looked decent when really it just made him appear to have eaten something rotten. Revan neither bothered nor cared to learn the idiot's name for that reason alone.
He really had no time for their games however. Not that he enjoyed their encounters for they usually ended with something broken, bruised or otherwise injured but he was not one to back down from a challenge. Today, however, he had specific things to pick up and return to his father that, if ignored, late or forgotten, would earn him a lashing he'd not soon forget.
"Maybe the songbird will sing for us, lads?" Nethin said now giving Revan a good hard shove to the chest that sent him back into the alley he'd just come out of. Shortcuts never hurt – unless Nethin found you in them.
"I said I don't have time for this," Revan growled, shoving back with equal strength.
"Make time," is all Nethin said before all of them closed in, five on one. The odds were hardly fair but this time they didn't seem interested in simple bruises or a side-alley rough-and-tumble. Something had set these drones in a mood, something that had upset them enough to want to take it out on Revan.
"Where have you been?" his father asked as soon as he set foot in the door.
Revan's feet stopped of their own accord but he couldn't look at his father. He was surprised he was even able to remain upright after what had just happened.
"I… ran in to Nethin," Revan replied, choosing the truth over a lie.
"Is that beast still giving you trouble?" his father responded, the anger already on his voice and tone. "You should end that account, settle it man to man like is proper instead of letting that brat skulk about whenever he feels the need to let out aggressions."
Light, if you only knew… Revan thought, swallowing hard as he handed his father the packages he'd been charged with collecting.
"I don't… uhm… I don't feel very well and… Nethin didn't help," he continued, still unable to look his father in the eye. "If its alright with you… I think I'll skip supper tonight."
"Are you ill?" his father said, noting that his son did look rather pale and clammy – something that would not happen as a result of being picked on, even if he'd lost.
"Maybe… my… stomach hurts," Revan said. It wasn't entirely a lie either. His stomach pained him from how much it twisted into knots and roiled with the memories of what he'd done.
"Stop it Nethin!" Revan roared, feeling the hands holding him down, overpowering him as Nethin took out his aggressions on Revan. "Get off!"
"That's what I like to hear," Nethin crooned sadistically. "That's what a songbird should really sound like."
The others didn't question, just watched as their leader tormented this boy, their peer for no other reason than the sheer joy of it.
"GET OFF!!" Revan howled when things had gotten a little too far and a little too uncomfortable for his tolerance levels. Nethin wasn't after a good beating, he was after something else, something more vile and disgusting than a simple brawl through the alley. Revan could see it in his eyes, the anger and fear in the other boy that was forced to endure what he was about to enact. It was terrifying almost to the point that Revan thought he might be sick right then and there. Nethin wanted someone else to feel the same pain, share the same horrors that he endured – what better person than Revan?
But fear was a powerful thing, for the tormentor and the tormented. The other boys didn't realize what was happening until it was too late, until they'd started feeling the burn against their hands, the heat rising within them and then the painful, horrifying smolder of their own flesh.
"…van? Son, are you sure you're not coming down with something? You looked downright ghastly just now," he heard his father say, coming back to the moment.
"I…" he stuttered unsure of how to continue. "I… think I just need some rest."
"Go," his father said without argument. He knew when his children were lying just to get out of chores and when they were honestly feeling under the weather. If he hadn't known better, he'd have said Revan had been about to pass out not five seconds prior. The boy was ill with something and if it didn't clear by morning, he'd fetch the Wisdom to come and look him over.
Revan didn't argue, nodding numbly as he traversed the steps to the top floors of the inn in a daze. The maids that passed him smiled or said hello but he neither took notice nor responded, his mind forged with the sounds and images of the other boys writhing in agony, bleeding from their eyes and ears at his will – a will he couldn't stop until it was too late.
His hand lingers on the doorframe, the inn quiet and dark while everyone sleeps. Already rumors have started to fly: a Fade had killed those boys or a Darkfriend, perhaps even some mysterious plague.
No one can ever know the truth, they wouldn't understand anyway.
With one final glance to his old life, he slips out the door and starts his long journey towards the end of his sanity.
